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Debian vs MySQL on Ubuntu comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Debian's open-source platform cuts costs by eliminating fees, supporting less powerful hardware, and enhancing efficiency with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
3.7
Organizations experienced faster processing, better compliance, and cost savings with MySQL on Ubuntu, benefiting from efficient data management.
There were direct cost savings since Debian has no licensing fees, and we did not require paid support, so it saved us considerable money.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
We were able to save a substantial amount by using Linux instead of Windows and spending a lot of money on Windows licenses.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
I have seen a return on investment; specifically, the cost is around zero because there is no need for a license, and since my whole team uses Debian, we are fine with the number of employees needed.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
The audit trail MySQL provided also meant zero untracked data losses in production.
AI Engineer at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
I have seen a return on investment with MySQL on Ubuntu because I can say that everything we can do here is save money and time, and even we are using a small number of team to handle it.
Senior QA Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have indeed seen a return on investment, particularly in time saved, as using MySQL on Ubuntu has proven to be 15 to 20% quicker than building a Postgres database.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Debian users mainly utilize community resources for support, with minimal dependence on official channels or third-party services.
Sentiment score
4.6
MySQL on Ubuntu support is community-driven, utilizing forums and resources, with high user satisfaction and optional paid support.
We rely on community resources for support, such as documentation, forums, and asking questions online.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Whenever I had a query, I used Google to search for it and found very helpful information from public platforms.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
While it does not have traditional paid customer support like some commercial distributions, the Debian community and documentation are very strong.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
I used AWS support, and they are very quick to respond.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Whenever we can, we call the support and they fix the problem right away.
IT Administrator at a university with 51-200 employees
GitHub Copilot provides substantial information that helps when encountering errors.
Erp Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Debian is scalable and reliable in cloud environments, offering flexibility and efficient resource management for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
6.0
MySQL on Ubuntu efficiently scales medium data volumes with indexing, supports partitioning, clustering, and offers cost-effective open-source solutions.
We don't spin up new Debian instances arbitrarily.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
As the growth of our infrastructure is required, we can host many Debian servers.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
We decided to use Debian because we needed a more stable and predictable base, especially for long-running systems where frequent changes or upgrades could cause issues.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
When running on EC2 instances, for example, I can scale it from zero to 10,000 machines or even higher.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Clustering is useful because that helps with high availability and scalability.
CEO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
MySQL on Ubuntu provides excellent reliability for scalability needs.
Senior Software Developer at hireHQ
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Debian is praised for stability and reliability, though some users note slow updates and older package versions.
Sentiment score
7.8
MySQL on Ubuntu offers stable uptime, reliable transaction support, and efficient process management, enhancing database operations and replication.
I rate Debian an eight out of ten because it excels in stability, reliability, and package management, which are very important for long-running production systems.
embedded software engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
That long-term support has helped me and my customers by being stable and running well.
Embedded Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In my experience, Debian is very stable.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
MySQL on Ubuntu uses the InnoDB engine, which has ACID properties integrated.
Senior Software Developer at hireHQ
In real-world production use, it has been consistently proven across startups, mid-sized companies, and large organizations as well.
Senior QA Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
MySQL on Ubuntu is stable; both the MySQL component and the Ubuntu component are very stable, popular, and actively maintained.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Debian requires improvements in package management, UI, onboarding, release cycle, network management, and better documentation to enhance user experience.
MySQL on Ubuntu faces challenges with JSON handling, limited scalability, complex security, and inadequate full-text search optimization.
I believe security on Debian is top-notch due to its long history and the many individuals and organizations that rely on it, meaning there are many eyes on it.
Founder at a media company with 1-10 employees
If Debian had a memory-based distribution, similar to Alpine, that would be great, as we could get benefits in terms of memory or embedded systems.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
Debian was easy to set up.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Scaling out is much harder to do. Even though a master-slave setup can help maintain a real-time backup or offload queries, achieving true horizontal scaling with numerous nodes at once can be tricky with MySQL on Ubuntu.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
A more self-tuning approach to index optimization and query execution would reduce that burden, particularly for teams that focus more on application logic than database administration.
AI Engineer at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
The only area where I would say I have seen potential for improvement is occasional slowness, but I cannot really attribute it to the product; it could also be the design of the database and the queries.
CEO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Debian is cost-effective due to no licensing fees, making it ideal for enterprises compared to alternatives like Windows.
MySQL on Ubuntu provides a cost-effective, efficient solution with low setup, maintenance, and operational costs for businesses of all sizes.
My experience with Debian's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that it is all free.
IT Support Manager at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Debian is free, so there is no price.
Site Reliability Engineer Ii at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
As long as I remain within the limit of that credit, I can create machines as much as I want without exceeding the monthly limit.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Since MySQL on Ubuntu is quite lean, it results in low operational costs, making it favorable from a pricing perspective.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We can reduce licensing cost saving with MySQL on Ubuntu because there is no cost.
Senior QA Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Debian delivers stability, performance, and security with vast support and resources, ideal for enterprise environments and web services.
MySQL on Ubuntu offers reliable, scalable performance with strong security, resource efficiency, and community support for various applications.
Debian's stability helps me in my daily work because my work relies on stability; I'm trying to deploy production workloads, and Debian offers that stability for me.
DevOps Technology Lead at TriStratus Ltd
Debian has kept my workflow secure by maintaining system stability with day-to-day or monthly updates with security patches, securing the system from external attacks.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Debian has positively impacted my organization primarily in cost-efficiency, with on-premises hardware running faster and cheaper.
IT Support Manager at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
It extends with volume very well. Most RDBMS don't scale very well, but this one scales very well and has been very reliable and highly available.
CEO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
By putting it in MySQL on Ubuntu, even if the node went down, the database would come back up.
Chief Data Strategy and Governance Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Since our EC2 instance is deployed in a virtual private network with MySQL on Ubuntu installed, it is protected from unauthorized access and use, and we have also encrypted the data in MySQL.
Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Debian
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MySQL on Ubuntu
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Debian is 6.2%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL on Ubuntu is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Debian6.2%
MySQL on Ubuntu0.2%
Other93.6%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2795433 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Lightweight platform has reduced cloud costs and has kept long‑running web apps reliable
In my opinion, the best features Debian offers include its stability. The stable branch really is stable because once it is configured, I understand you can run it for a very long period of time without needing to reboot or update any of the components. That is really good when you want an application to be extremely stable and not go down, and you are happy using slightly older components. I also value the fact that Debian is open source, so it is free. That is very useful, and it has a big development community that builds it. I understand there are tens of thousands of software libraries which work with Debian from the apt package manager, APT, and also it is very lightweight, which I find to be good as well because that helps with cost savings. Debian's lightweight design benefits my organization because it does not come with bloatware, minimizing RAM usage. Because of that, we can choose cheaper EC2 instances. You do not have to have as powerful RAM, which makes things cheaper, and also because it does not come with all this bloatware, it also makes it faster. So it is very efficient. Debian positively impacts my organization by allowing us to utilize a much more lightweight operating system with Amazon EC2 instances, which greatly reduces costs because we can use EC2 instances with lower RAM. Cost savings are good. Debian is very well known across the industry, so different engineers from different teams know how to use it. Using the APT package manager is a common skill for cloud professionals, which makes it good, especially if you are hiring individuals into the company, because at least you would expect they have some type of background using Debian. I do not know exact measurements, but I would expect we could save at least 10% of costs with EC2 instances just because our memory and CPU requirements would be lower because Debian is lightweight. So it would save cost to some degree.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at hireHQ
Reliable data platform has improved uptime and reduced infrastructure and licensing costs
MySQL on Ubuntu is an open-source relational database management system that stores data in tables and columns. It is free, open-source, and very stable for servers with easy installation for our production application. MySQL on Ubuntu demonstrates excellent stability and works very effectively with our Node.js backend. It is memory and disk efficient while providing regular security and bug updates. From an organizational perspective, MySQL on Ubuntu offers significant advantages. The cost is excellent since it is open-source with no licensing fees. The reliability it provides is outstanding with minimal crashes and exceptional stability. The improved application performance is notable with fast query searches and superior indexing properties. MySQL on Ubuntu saves considerable time and reduces operational costs through decreased database licensing fees as an open-source solution. We achieve a thirty to sixty percent reduction in infrastructure costs. System uptime is excellent in our stable Linux environment, reaching 99.9 percent uptime. Application performance improvements are substantial, delivering twenty-five to forty percent faster API responses when queries are optimized according to our needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
26%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Debian?
The pricing for Debian is based on what is used and how much is used.
What needs improvement with Debian?
Debian currently has some older packages that are not available in the latest version. The stable release cycle is slow, where new features come late. Additionally, Debian is not as beginner-friend...
What is your primary use case for Debian?
Debian is used as a Linux distributor for hosting applications, servers, and deployments. The organization primarily relies on Debian for cloud and DevOps, creating Docker images and Kubernetes nod...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MySQL on Ubuntu?
Regarding pricing and licensing, I use the free tier, so I don't know much about pricing.
What needs improvement with MySQL on Ubuntu?
There are several areas where MySQL on Ubuntu can be improved. First, the initial configuration out of the box is not always optimal for production workloads. When MySQL on Ubuntu is first installe...
What is your primary use case for MySQL on Ubuntu?
MySQL on Ubuntu is used mainly for backend database management for our web applications. We handle a fair amount of transactional data, so we need something stable and fast. MySQL on Ubuntu fits th...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Debian 12
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Debian vs. MySQL on Ubuntu and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.